infer、deduce、conclude、gather与judge这些动词均含“推断”之意。
infer : 指从已提供的论据或从已接受的前提出发而推断出的结论。
- What do you infer from her refusal?
你从她的拒绝中能推断出什么？ - I inferred from her expression that she wanted to leave.
从她的表情上我可判断出她想离开。
deduce : 指有充分根据的推论，也指逻辑学上的演绎。
- We cannot deduce very much from these figures.
我们无法从这些数字中推断出太多东西。 - The police have deduced that he must have left his apartment yesterday evening.
警方推断他肯定是在昨天晚上离开公寓的。
conclude : 指得出符合逻辑的结论。
- The jury concluded from the evidence that the defendant was innocent.
陪审团依据证据判裁决告无罪。 - The discussions continued late into the night, but nothing was concluded.
一直谈到深夜，可是没有作出任何决定。
gather : 指从听到的情况推测、判定。
- Harry loves his new job, I gather.
我认为哈里很喜欢他的新工作。 - From what I can gather, they're old school friends.
据我推断，他们是过去上学时的朋友。
judge : 多指经过仔细鉴定或评价之后作出决断。
- So far, he seems to be handling the job well, but it's really too soon to judge.
到目前为止，他的工作看起来还干得不错，但现在下结论还为时过早。 - It's difficult to judge whether the new system really is an improvement.
很难判断新系统是否真的有所改进。 - The meeting was judged (to have been) a success.
人们认为会议很成功。 - You shouldn't judge by/on appearances alone.
你不该仅仅以貌取人。 - I'm hopeless at judging distance(s) (= guessing how far it is between places).
我不擅长估算距离。
